KickStarter System Shock 1 Remake by Nightdive Studios

[vortex]

snip

I wish they get better CEO like those of EA, CDProjekt, Rockstar Studios to make them crunch more.

 

[Eisen]

dodgerolls or someshit idk.

The Dork Souls of immersive sims?

 

[potatojohn]

People should try Arma 3 now.

?

It's just so big and impressive, I know it's a different genre but other indie games should see how far behind they are.

Arma 3 isn't an indie game.

It was announced in 2011 and now after 11 years of development it is still shit and will never be fixed.

Also, it's basically the same game as OFP and Arma 2

 

[wishbonetail]

System Shock was great 30 years ago but today it's less so, and an amateurish remake of a 30 year old game should feel uneasy today.

Level design is unparalleled in this game. After finishing it I do not understand how can I return to any of the nowadays turd.

 

[potatojohn]

I always thought SS1 was a difficult game to look at*, but the remake is even more visually confusing.

* Presumably due to the low res, low fov and low framerate, which are all fixed in the remake.

 

[wishbonetail]

Presumably due to the low res, low fov and low framerate, which are all fixed in the remake.

Wasn't it fixed in Enhanced edition? Havent tried the original but i dont recall low fov or fps in EE and im usually sensitive to these stuff.

 

[potatojohn]

Presumably due to the low res, low fov and low framerate, which are all fixed in the remake.

Wasn't it fixed in Enhanced edition? Havent tried the original but i dont recall low fov or fps in EE and im usually sensitive to these stuff.

Yeah, my mistake. I meant enhanced edition not remake.

 

[anvi]

People should try Arma 3 now.

?

It's just so big and impressive, I know it's a different genre but other indie games should see how far behind they are.

Arma 3 isn't an indie game.

It was announced in 2011 and now after 11 years of development it is still shit and will never be fixed.

Also, it's basically the same game as OFP and Arma 2

How is it not an indie game? What does the date have to do with anything? What does it matter if it's like the earlier games? And what needs to be fixed?

 

[forumvisitor#451]

It's just so big and impressive, I know it's a different genre but other indie games should see how far behind they are. System Shock was great 30 years ago but today it's less so, and an amateurish remake of a 30 year old game should feel uneasy today.

But they keep getting away with it. That shitty empty Amazon MMO releasing in a world that already has EverQuest and 28 expansions full of content, should not be possible. Too many devs get away with it.

I kinda understand what you mean but Arma isn't as detailed as System Shock or other immersive sims. Yes, you can create and have amazing experience in Arma 3 but it will be more big scale as compared to claustrophobic feel of System Shock. It's smaller scale and you gotta jump small gaps, while in Arma you traverse large areas and do not get stuck because of platforming.

Arma 3 isn't an indie game.

It was announced in 2011 and now after 11 years of development it is still shit and will never be fixed.

Also, it's basically the same game as OFP and Arma 2

Nothing needs fixing, you can tweak the game to work flawlessly. It's too big, too open to work for every possible scenario. And base game can be kinda shit bud mods fixed it so what. You get the experience, only experience like that. No comparison in terms of opennes, possibilites etc., just ask around here if anything comes close to what Arma offers.

And it being same game as OFP and Arma 2 is exactly the point, it is same game, same engine, just improved upon.

But to talk about that game in this thread is kinda weird ngl.

 

[anvi]

Arma 3 but it will be more big scale as compared to claustrophobic feel of System Shock.

I'm not comparing the games, I'm talking about what people should expect from a game in 2022.

 

[Jenkem]

When they say "the finish line is approaching" do they mean on the backer perks or the actual game?

the finish line for the release of the next demo of medical

 

[Boleskine]

https://www.pcgamer.com/the-system-...d-and-we-got-a-peek-at-its-completed-arsenal/

The System Shock remake is nearly finished, and we got a peek at its completed arsenal
By Wes Fenlon published about 3 hours ago

The pulse rifle and laser rapier are looking mighty fine.

(Image credit: Nightdive Studios)

Change the name, and I suspect Nightdive's remake of System Shock could pass for an entirely new game in 2022. There are a few telltale signs it has roots in a 1994 PC game, like the hotbar on the bottom of the HUD packed with gear and the grid-based inventory. The pipe hacking minigame is perhaps a dead giveaway. The pump action on the pulse rifle's reload animation, on the other hand, makes System Shock look like a wholly new shooter, as does the electricity that arcs off a cyborg's head as it explodes in a grisly headshot. This is a handsome game, falling somewhere in between a new big budget shooter and a pixel-meets polygon throwback like Prodeus.

It's been a long road to get to this point from the 2016 Kickstarter, but System Shock is now "pretty much complete," in the words of Nightdive's Larry Kuperman, and headed into its final months of polish leading up to a release later this year. "Every level's here, every enemy is in place, every weapon is in place," Kuperman told me in a demo at this year's Game Developers Conference. It's playable from start-to-finish and going through QA now.

2018 U-turn, when Nightdive decided it was changing too much from the original game. "We tried to stay very true to canon. That was something that was really important to us, that our core audience who are fans of System Shock can look at this and go 'yes, this is what I was looking for. It's the game that I know, but with polish.'"

Where Nightdive touched System Shock's design, the changes have been minor: streamlining the number of grenades into a multi-function grenade, for example. "Every person on the team has invested hours and hours into how the original gameplay worked, but we also want to make sure this has a modern feel," Kuperman said. That meant adding touches like multiple reload animations for each weapon and messages that flicker across the screens of Citadel Station's CRT monitors.

Nightdive plans to release a beta build to Kickstarter backers when it's stable and has gone through a thorough QA process. For now, let's look at some weapons in beautiful gif form.

Classic pistol, nothin' fancy, but look at how viscous that blood splatter is. This game might get messy.

Excellent pump action on the shotgun, but I especially like how it re-chambers.

The pulse rifle has an even slicker pump motion than the shotgun, right? I like how your hands tilt it upright, as if you need gravity's help to prime this thing for the next shot. But it's the particle effect from the explosion that ends up stealing the show.

There are a lot of lightsaber wannabes out there, but I like how the laser rapier beam bends as you swing it. Fencing in the System Shock universe must be high risk.

 

[Gargaune]

There are a few telltale signs it has roots in a 1994 PC game, like the hotbar on the bottom of the HUD packed with gear and the grid-based inventory.

Talk about capturing our miserable present in one sad little sentence.

 

[Tyranicon]

I'm excited for this release regardless of it being shit or not. At least the kickstarter backers have some kind of closure, and we get some entertainment.

 

[Tweed]

https://www.pcgamer.com/the-system-...d-and-we-got-a-peek-at-its-completed-arsenal/

Ah, I see they finally got the Big Daddies security bots in.

 

[Beowulf]

[...] laser rapier beam bends as you swing it.

 

[JDR13]

I think it's going to be good, but I also think it's going to fly under the radar and not get as much credit as it should. Devs fault for taking so damn long.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Excellent pump action on the shotgun, but I especially like how it re-chambers.

Load shells into the front of the gun, watch cartridge get ejected further back on it.

Either I'm missing something big about how shotguns work, or they got this completely ass-backwards.

 

[Bad Sector]

Either I'm missing something big about how shotguns work, or they got this completely ass-backwards.

I don't think it makes sense to try and make sense of a fantasy shotgun TBH, especially one with lights, LCDs, etc. But in any case i can imagine a mechanism that would have the cartridges stored near the handguard bit you pull backwards to reload and have one cartridge slide in the chamber, fire and then the empty cartridge is ejected.

But TBH the entire idea of using a manual pump action shotgun in a futuristic setting (especially one with laser guns) is a bit of an anachronism in the first place and mainly used because it looks cool - so the "rule of cool" can be used to explain any sort of weirdness you may notice in settings like that.

 

[gurugeorge]

I always thought SS1 was a difficult game to look at*, but the remake is even more visually confusing.

* Presumably due to the low res, low fov and low framerate, which are all fixed in the remake.

Kinell, taste the rainbow or what?

Lack of visual soup is precisely one of the things that makes earlier games play better, the fact that the devs here haven't realized that isn't encouraging.

On the other hand ... IT'S SYSTEM SHOCK!!!

 

[Trithne]

It's less confusing in motion, but the bloom is aggressively painful at times.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

Load shells into the front of the gun, watch cartridge get ejected further back on it.

Either I'm missing something big about how shotguns work, or they got this completely ass-backwards.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RuleOfCool

 

[Gargaune]

Lack of visual soup is precisely one of the things that makes earlier games play better, the fact that the devs here haven't realized that isn't encouraging.

You're right, more and more these days, flashy visuals and UI are so over the top that they impede gameplay. Cyberpunk 2077 was a recent example of this for me, there's just a bit too much going on. But I don't think this System Shock remake looks too bad in this respect. Maybe just mellow down the bloom and contrasts a little bit, up the gamma a notch, and it should play smooth. The simplistic, "outdated" level geometry should also help in this regards, it makes things look nicely aired out and easy to orient yourself in.

And I gotta say, I do dig this particular retro vibe to the environmental design. It's not especially convincing but, ironically, now that videogame spaces are so cluttered and geometrically sophisticated, the Lego architecture looks fresh and exciting. It strikes me as a good example of retro aesthetics that doesn't fall into the traps of brutalist '90s brush geometry or "ironic" pixel art.

 

[LudensCogitet]

Lack of visual soup is precisely one of the things that makes earlier games play better, the fact that the devs here haven't realized that isn't encouraging.

You're right, more and more these days, flashy visuals and UI are so over the top that they impede gameplay. Cyberpunk 2077 was a recent example of this for me, there's just a bit too much going on. But I don't think this System Shock remake looks too bad in this respect. Maybe just mellow down the bloom and contrasts a little bit, up the gamma a notch, and it should play smooth. The simplistic, "outdated" level geometry should also help in this regards, it makes things look nicely aired out and easy to orient yourself in.

And I gotta say, I do dig this particular retro vibe to the environmental design. It's not especially convincing but, ironically, now that videogame spaces are so cluttered and geometrically sophisticated, the Lego architecture looks fresh and exciting. It strikes me as a good example of retro aesthetics that doesn't fall into the traps of brutalist '90s brush geometry or "ironic" pixel art.

I remember playing Deus Ex: Human Revolution for the first time and encountering a janitor's cart in a little fenced in area in the first mission. I looked at the bottles and rags and different shelves and was like "what the fuck is this all FOR?". It was one prop, sitting off to the side, that did nothing and served no purpose and it contained more polygons than 2 levels of the Abyss in Ultima Underworld.

It's odd how ignoring almost everything you are seeing and hearing is a basic part of playing a modern game.

 

[gurugeorge]

Lack of visual soup is precisely one of the things that makes earlier games play better, the fact that the devs here haven't realized that isn't encouraging.

You're right, more and more these days, flashy visuals and UI are so over the top that they impede gameplay. Cyberpunk 2077 was a recent example of this for me, there's just a bit too much going on. But I don't think this System Shock remake looks too bad in this respect. Maybe just mellow down the bloom and contrasts a little bit, up the gamma a notch, and it should play smooth. The simplistic, "outdated" level geometry should also help in this regards, it makes things look nicely aired out and easy to orient yourself in.

And I gotta say, I do dig this particular retro vibe to the environmental design. It's not especially convincing but, ironically, now that videogame spaces are so cluttered and geometrically sophisticated, the Lego architecture looks fresh and exciting. It strikes me as a good example of retro aesthetics that doesn't fall into the traps of brutalist '90s brush geometry or "ironic" pixel art.

I remember playing Deus Ex: Human Revolution for the first time and encountering a janitor's cart in a little fenced in area in the first mission. I looked at the bottles and rags and different shelves and was like "what the fuck is this all FOR?". It was one prop, sitting off to the side, that did nothing and served no purpose and it contained more polygons than 2 levels of the Abyss in Ultima Underworld.

It's odd how ignoring almost everything you are seeing and hearing is a basic part of playing a modern game.

I went through this on some thread a while ago. A lot of it's to do with missing depth perception (z axis). We have no trouble navigating the real world for salient objects, even though it would be just as visually messy and confusing if projected into a 2-d surface as any modern game (actually much more so - think of a photo of a Favela). The problem is that our eyes are unable to selectively focus in the z axis when depth is merely represented in terms of perspective on a 2-d surface, in the way that they are in the real, 3-d world. And VR doesn't solve the problem either.

What with things like Nanite, you could have actually fully realistic 3-d game worlds now, with all the messy real-world detail, but until the z axis problem is solved (e.g. with "holotanks" or something like Star Trek's holodeck), games are going to have to discipline themselves to be really selective in what they show, otherwise gameplay becomes confusing and difficult for this simple, mechanical reason. (e.g. paradigmatically, you'll still need consistent "big white box with blue stripe=medkit" signals and that type of thing - whereas with a holodeck you'd be able to spot medical kits in whatever form). Consistent art design and art direction, with some element of stylization that works around this problem is still going to be necessary until the z-axis problem is solved.

To put this another way, our visual system is really good at discerning edges and colour differences, but the full visual system includes selective z-axis focus, information from which is integrated with the "2d" aspects of edge and colour difference perception. Games without real (not simulated perspectival) z-axis depth put the whole weight of discernment into the 2-d aspects of our visual system, and that's not enough to enable gameplaly navigation in fully realistic environments.